Origin of kidney papillary tumors from renal progenitors

Purpose: Using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq), Young et al. (Science, 2018, PMID 30093597) recently identified a canonical cancer transcriptome as the possible cell of origin of papillary renal cell carcinoma (pRCC) that matched a rare proximal convoluted tubular cell population characterized as VCAM1+ SLC17A3+ SLC7A13-, a cell cluster signature defined as PT1. The goal of this study is to compare pRCC transcriptome to human renal progenitor cell (RPC) transcriptome. Methods: To compare the pRCC cells with PT1 features to our RPC population, we analyzed Young pRCC scRNAseq data set together with scRNAseq data obtained from human RPC cultures. Results: The PT1 signature that characterizes the cell of origin of pRCC identifies a RPC cluster. Conclusions: These results suggest that the cell of origin of pRCC corresponds to RPCs. Comparison of scRNAseq data from pRCC cells and RPCs. The same RPCs sample was used to create four libraries, each linked to a different 10x Genomics index.